As it does with every major flagship and smartwatch release, Samsung has just sent out a press invite for the Galaxy S9's unveiling. You'll note that the invitation doesn't explicitly mention the S9, but given the gigantic purple "9," it's safe to say we know what Samsung will be taking the wraps off of.

The event is scheduled for February 25th, a little over a month away. "The Camera. Reimagined." is the slogan that the company has chosen to go with, and from that, it's not difficult to tell that Samsung is incorporating some sort of new camera technology into the S9 series. From a leak of the phone's packaging earlier this month, we're fairly certain the S9 will feature a 'Super Speed' camera with variable apertures, as well as a 'Super Slow-mo' feature. Samsung hasn't made any significant strides in the camera department for a few iterations, but it looks like that's about to change.

As usual, you'll be able to tune into all the fun at samsung.com. We can hope that there won't be any significant interruptions in the stream, but that's proven difficult in the past.

Samsung prices their phones atmospherically high so they can do promotional sales. Carriers such as TMobile are particularly aggressive about this, my mom got two S8's on BOGO with a new line activation that can be cancelled the instant the new phone is paid off, which we did via the Visa gift card, so we got 2 s8's for the price of one + around a hundred bucks, and I got my Note 8 for around 600 when TMobile did a 100 dollar cut and offered a 200 dollar Samsung pay Visa card on top of that. Customers get a good deal, uninformed customers think they're getting a waaaaay better deal than they're actually getting, samsung still makes money and gets another phone in someones hands.

Anyone who buys a full priced Samsung phone is a sucker.

htc_fan89

Not everyone gets those deals, for example in Canada we don’t and it’s cheaper to buy it outright instead of getting it on those 80+ plans that you only get a 1gb with. I always go with exynos the best one to get.

X-47B

DSLR lens? What do you exactly mean by that?

mma173

People keep asking for more and more features and higher quality which come at an additional cost. If you think these devices are expensive, you should simply go for another series from Samsung, or go for a different brand.

Moreover, the sales indicate that people are satisfied.

Vivek Rameses

I'll pass if the focus is on the camera.

KOLIO

Cue David Bowie's "Space Oddity" :
Ground Control to Major Yawn......................................

tim242

I will buy it, but not for the camera. I already reimagined the camera, I bought a real one...Sony A7riii

Good_Ole_Pinocchio

So what's your reason.

tim242

This year, I think my reason is to go from the regular, to the plus model.

Suresh Aryal

Exynos 9810 is a huge upgrade in terms of CPU performance and camera specs. 4K 60fps HDR videos should be awesome.

I think I want it... Very interested in the direction they're planning on going with the software.

4Ui812

I'll wait till 6 months after release and pay 30% less for the phone

D13H4RD2L1V3

Reimagined, but probably not heaps better than the phone you already have if it’s a flagship from 2015 or newer.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool to have an adjustable aperture, just that on a really small camera sensor, ehhh, the effects might not be that big.

f/1.5 though. On a 1/2.6”, low-light could be improved, but I wished they’d pair it up with HDR+-like processing.

Suresh Aryal

So my S8 will not see Oreo before S9. Confirmed.

jaycemiskel

That's a given. I don't even plan on receiving updates before I move on to the next device.

lordmerovingian

Sad, but best and truest comment all day.

Alex Darby

Why not join the beta?

Semianonymous

Beta is over and invite only anyways

Alex Darby

Seems strange. Why open it to anybody and then close it?

Semianonymous

to my knowledge it was never open to everyone. It was an invite only system distributed though the Samsung+ app. Its similar to how they did it last year with the Nougat beta for the S7, there was a beta app that you downloaded that enrolled you in the beta, but it was still invite only after you enrolled. I have an S8 lying around (yay bogo deals) and it never got access to the beta.

Thomas Lörinczi

it was closed because they are done developing on it and they are about to release the stable

Suresh Aryal

Only limited to certain countries, not mine (Canada).

Alex Darby

Ah, I see. I'm in the UK so assumed most other places would have it

Good_Ole_Pinocchio

That's always the case. Nothing new here.

Suresh Aryal

No it isn't. S8 was announced on 29th March last year and S7's in Canada got Nougat on March 14. Other countries got Nougat months before that.

Mark Sheldon

They ushualy updat right before or during there next release

Jeremy

Samsung is probably tired of hearing that the Pixel 2 has the Best. Camera. Ever. Even though it's not. But no doubt the Pixel 3 will have the Best. Camera. Ever. Even if it isn't.

I took part in a blind taste test on another site. The iPhone X won. When they published the results and revealed which phone took which photos, I saw that I had unknowingly voted for the iPhone X for most of the photos.

They can do whatever, they're just not going to be able to match Google and their AI based image processing. There's only so much you can do with the physical limitations on a smartphone camera. I think the camera itself won't be a big step up, they're just touting the new AI chip that'll help with settings (just like the Huawei Mate 10). Expect more gimmicky "features" than actual image quality improvements and some AI stickers (Apple did it, so you can bet Samsung won't be left behind lol).

MicroNix

Maybe they'll match the pixel's horrid video panning... oh wait, they already surpassed that with *hardware* stabilization like it should be.

Lol, nope. I've not owned any of the Pixel devices. I don't like the design, I don't like the lack of obvious features, I don't like the omission of the headphone jack and I don't like the price either. But, I can see what's better in which department without being terribly biased. I prefer to be biased towards friends and family, not gadgets and corporations.

Myke Orealius

Yeah what up with the Pixel hate? If it has a good camera it has a good camera, I personally owning all top phones of last year put the pixel as number 1. I went to a Europe tour vacation and all my friends only wanted to use my pixel with portrait mode.

Jeremy

Actually, Google is the first to rush getting AI stickers/VR into photos/videos. Google is in full-throttle copy Apple mode. Expect the Pixel 3 to have wireless charging, now that Apple added it.

illregal

I hope you meant to put an /s at the end of your statement.

JG

I'm interested in the Camera Reimagined tag... It'll be interesting to see what they've got up their sleeve... And possibly, more interesting to see what Google might announce to one-up Samsung's.

I'd also be interested to see if Google might have the Google Photo promo codes ready in time for the S9 launch... They could offer a similar bonus like Google, offer free original quality uploads to Photos for all S9 pre-orders (or all S9s in general).

tim242

Variable aperture.

lordmerovingian

Didn't the S8/S8+/Active come out like recently....

tim242

The S8/S8+ came out in April, which was a month late. The S9/S9+ will be out in March, like previous models.

You do realise that this is not press invite but invite to watch this event online

thebowleggedone

Smartphones are getting boring at this point. The biggest selling point on most of these smartphones are now cameras that for most people they've been good enough for years now. I did just buy a Pixel 2 when they came out, but really that phone was no better than the Nexus 5X it replaced and had it not be for my braking the 5X and wanting to stick with a phone that is Project Fi compatible and that gets updates directly from Google I'd certainly not have gotten that. We really need a phone that fills the Nexus role where it's Project Fi compatible, get updates directly from Google, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg since at this point i don't even care about these "camera improvements" when most people are just posting pics on FB, Instagram, and other social media where all these DSL level camera stuff isn't even needed.